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Yeah I hear ya! Giveaways seem like a good idea to get more following, but I didn't know you must make urself well-known via other sources to have good number of entries in a giveaway. I had to cancel my contest coz of low entries.

Readers4authors said:

Holding a giveaway before I got a bigger audience! Well, live and learn.^^'

I thought I was the only one trying to hide my blog from the family n friends :) Kate, I think its just a novelty of this blogging thing and since we r doing everything on our own, we might be afraid of the criticism especially if it comes from the people who are supposed to support you no matter what. And sometimes it is jealousy too, that we want to avoid if we r doing good.

I declared my blog 1 month after I started it, wrote a nice email to everybody and expected the comments to pour in. But just 2-3 congratulating replies and thats all. As I thought, people didn't jump on the link I sent them to see what I was doing. Then after a few weeks I started getting queries like how did u think of this, what abt the income etc., so people were curious but didn't want to show so much interest in my work.

Well, whatever anybody thinks, we just have to keep going for ourselves. YOU are your only motivation.

kate said:

Okay... Confused... Why the hiding? Be proud of your work

Beth Grund said:

My family knew but never visited my blog, HA. It took a TV interview for them to find it..so weird, right?! Your blog is your business period! Jamie said:

I am totally blogging in the closet right now. The only person who knows about my blog are my husband, mother and best friend. If my sister-in-law found out, I would never hear the end of it. I'm so scared I'll be discovered. I'm thinking about just coming out already.

I think my biggest mistake was taking a blogging break. I pretty much abandoned blogging while I was illustrating last year right when my blog was starting to pick up totally lost readers and am now trying to start back up with regular posting, frequent giveaways, and blog features... I hope it works I miss my readers' voices.

i'm really sorry, but that is hilarious. i am only a novice at this point, and i'm sure i will do something equally apalling (if i haven't already), but i am laughing out loud right now. thanks for sharing.

Stephanie Rosenhahn said:

The biggest mistake I ever made was pretty bad, I think. I have a daily post called the Low Entry Lowdown where I list low entry giveaways so my readers can help out fellow bloggers (and themselves!), and I found this awesome site where a lady was listing different giveaways. I misunderstood and thought she was only doing it for extra entries in giveaways, but it was actually a post similar to mine, so it was just like stealing someone else's content. I felt terrible and embarrassed! I'm really glad she was so understanding about it. Needless to say, I haven't been back to her site yet....I don't ever want her to think I'd do that on purpose! I am super careful about where I get my info from now! Lesson learned!

I think the biggest mistake I ever made was not taking my blogs seriously. I would put one up and get bored and take it down. I loved designing the blog and getting it set up, but I would lose interest after a few posts and move on to something else.

I am much more grounded now, but I look back over the past 6 years or so and I see opportunities that I wasted by not sticking it out with my blogs. I have since found my passions and I love blogging about them, but it was a hard road of trial and error and learning to be disciplined.